So there are a lot of changes coming with 1.6 for warriors and there are some tweaks I wanted to make to Gnolacks build anyway. I've poked around at some of it on the test realms, but I'm still looking for opinions.

Anyway here is what I'm looking at.

Protection
Shield Specialization - 5/5
Toughness - 5/5
Iron Will - 5/5
Improved Shield Block - 1/3
Defiance - 5/5
Improved Sunder Armor - 3/3
Improved Taunt - 2/2
Improved Shield Bash - 2/2
Concussion Blow Rank - 1/1
One-Handed Weapon Specialization - 1/5
Shield Slam - 1/1
Protection Total: 31

Fury
Cruelty - 5/5
Improved Demoralizing Shout - 4/5
Unbridled Wrath - 5/5
Piercing Howl - 1/1
Fury Total: 15

Arms
Deflection - 5/5
Arms Total: 5

Debated Points: Unbridled wrath at 5 with Improved Dem shout at only 4. One hand weapon spec (the point to unlock Shield Slam). No tactical mastery at all. Piercing Howl over Anger management.


OK, so why? Well Gnolack is protection spec come hell or high water. It's a bit of a theme. As part of that theme he is an angry little bugger so Fury fits that. But as long as he stays mostly protection, I'm open for change and debate. I'll touch on the ones that may not be obvious choices.

Iron Will - It works now. What are the most annoying things to happen when tanking? Getting stunned or charmed (some of the mob stun effects are actually charms too). I don't think this will do anything about the knockbacks but I think I want to give it a try. I dropped Improved Bloodrage and Last Stand to get this.

No Anticipation - I don't have it now and I'm not fully geared up either, but I'm sitting at 377 defense already. There are a few key pieces that will push me up to 400 and not hurt my stamina levels at all (In some cases they will improve them). I pretty much never take a crit as it is and I hear that the 420-430 line is where you don't get critted in MC/Onxyia. I'm close to that already. 10 more defense vs Iron Will or Last Stand wasn't worth it.

Defiance - I'm starting to believe this is the most valuable tank talent there is. I can dem shout and piercing howl on a CC'd mob and when it breaks it comes to me. I've played with several protection warriors that don't have this talent and have better one handed weapons than I do and since I have this I can steal aggro from them regularly even when they are pulling the mob and hitting it before me. I've seen how much easier I can hold 2 mobs through all out AoE than other tanks because of this. Everything I do in defensive stance gets a 15% aggro bonus. I end up tanking a lot without a lot of CC so I have to hold 3 or 4 mobs, defiance makes that simpler too.

Improved Shield Bash - I don't need it for the top tier talent so why get it? Because I can shut up mobs that do things other than cast spells with it. I can go up smack a caster and pull them back out of patrol range, no need to wait on them to cast or get more threat on a mage or priest using a counterspell or silence.

Shield Slam - I know I'm not all about DPS, but there are fights that even my current build without anger management or Unbridled Wrath that I have rage to burn. Besides it's the new warrior toy. So why not get:

Rank 1
30 Rage
5 yard range
Instant
6 second cooldown
Slam the target with your shield, causing 288 to 352 damage and has a 50% chance of dispelling 1 magic effect on the target. Also causes a moderate amount of threat.

Rank 4 is the same but it does 450 to 550 damage.

1H Weapon Spec - With my current weapon each point is 1.6 DPS in defensive stance. My current weapon Fiendish Machete isn't that good either. 1.6 DPS is that much more threat and isn't too bad for one point. But I could be convinced to put this point somewhere else.

Cruelty - Again I don't do a lot of DPS, but with this talent my crit chance is around 13%. So I crit about once every 8 swings. It's more rage, it's more aggro it's the mob dying a little faster. Dem Shout breaks sleep and I think another CC option I don't want booming voices higher radius. Dem shout gives me a bit more aggro on everything so I refresh it before the cooldown anyway, I don't need the duration of Booming Voice.

Improved Dem Shout - I don't need it for piercing howl and the old skill was 25% maxed. The new talent is 8/16/24/32/40% so 4 points is better than the old 5. The only worry is if I'm looking at the old improved Sunder. Will a 5 point dem shout lock out my 4 point improvement? But this also means AoE mages take less damage if I get that final point too. 5 points pushes this to a drop of I think 196 attack power, I get 184.8. Old maxed was 175.

Unbridled Wrath - Rage is good. I don't have tactical mastery or anger management. So I just lost charge and stance switch rage (and there are times when, if I miss on the swing, I don't have the rage to thunderclap to burn it off before a switch or else I break the CC that is incoming so I will switch right away instead of risking a T-clap breaking the sheep or shackle that is currently being cast). 40% chance to get one more rage along with 1 rage every time I block is a decent little flow of rage that makes up for no anger management.

Piercing Howl - I debated this skill too. I use it, it's another AoE aggro generator. An AoE Hamstring is nice too. It slows down the mobs that are running out of the flame strike and into Improve Arcane explosion. It gives me a little more PvP utility. It can help with runners a bit. However I don't use it as much as I should right now I don't think so I debated it some.


Edit: Fixed the rogue charm thing and a few typos.

I would get at least some Tactical Mastery, so you can switch to Battle Stance for T-Clap/Execute/Mocking Blow, or Berserker Stance for Intercept. Much more useful then Unbridled Wrath imo.

Also, none of the rogue attacks are charms - they are either stuns (Cheat Shot, Kidney Shot), Disorients/Knockouts (Gouge/Sap, you can break out of it with Berserker Rage anyway), or poisons (Blind). The stun resist is not a bad thing, but I don't know if you want to give up Last Stand for it.

Thanks for the correction on the rogue stuff, I actually misread Iron will as disorients not charms but I typed it correctly in my explanation.

Last Stand was a debate too. It has saved me from dying. But I'm still not happy with the way the skill works and I figured an always active passive vs a 10 minute cooldown skill that I forget I have at times was a good choice. If the skill added a true HP buffer, I'd be all over it. As it is without your healer knowing that you used it when it wears of it looks like you took a crit. It isn't a bad skill at all though even in the current implementation but I think Iron will might have more utility.

I debated tactical mastery hard as well, but tactical mastery without going all the way to anger management I don't think is the best choice.

I have 3 in tactical mastery right now. The switch out to do T-Clap is of minimal use at best and not usable at all around CC and without 5 points in it you need to build rage after a switch for a T-clap so you are taking more damage in that time. Switch to execute has been helpful, but it is nearly pointless in a raid as the mob is dead pretty much as soon as it gets to 20% or less health anyway except on a few bosses. Even then with no improvements to it I'm only likely to hit for for about 300 to 500 damage at best (unless I crit because I'll only have 15 or 20 rage at switch) and I can shield slam for that now. Mocking blow is of minimal use as taunt is available most of the time and I don't need even it to get a mobs attention back most of the time anyway, a defiance backed sunder is your friend . So I lose what I mentioned earlier, easy def stance rage after a charge and an easier intercept. Intercept is handy but is more important for the tank on protection duty than the main tank. Without maxing tactical mastery you will tend to lose a lot of rage on changes as well since what you want to change for in most cases isn't something you can wait to time it so you are at just 10 or 15 or 20 rage.

If I go deeper in arms I will get the hugely powerful anger management. But that means no piercing howl at all since I'm getting shield slam. The idea is to use Unbridled to make up for lack of anger management to some degree. If you haven't played without anger management you should see how much rage you are missing out on. And yes I realize that I'm saying I should get it, and then I increase my flexibility even more with more tac mastery as well. But I also don't think Gnolack needs to be more flexible right now. He's limited to mostly guild groups and raids with CA folks and others that I know for various reasons. So I have Shalandrax an Arms/Fury around, Galreth an Anger management protection spec, Darian an anger management protection spec and I think Anadrol is also anger management prot spec. So I'm also looking at it with that in mind. Gnolack is the little immovable object.

Thanks for the thoughts though, keep me thinking.

Edit: Fixed some typos

The prot build I'm strongly considering is 13 Arms (Anger management & Imp. Overpower), 5 Fury (cruelty), and 31 in Prot (with 5/5 1h mastery) and two points to taste - I may go for imp. heroic strike.

It would be my first time without piercing howl in a long time, but given the boost to the non-talented hamstring, I think it would be workable.

For someone who played without Tactical Mastery for a long time (1-60 and many weeks thereafter), I've become accustomed to having it recently. My main use for it while tanking is the ability to switch to zerker stance extremely briefly when I have ~20-25 rage, pop a quick whirlwind with a 2H, and switch immediately back to prot with a shield. Does wonders for holding aggro on multiple targets and the rage conservation means less time spent in zerker stance with the -10% damage modifier.

Minor, soon to be inapplicable correction: Darian is currently a piercing howl protection spec.

However, once 1.6 comes out and we get our free respec, you're right; I'm going back to anger management.

I was actually thinking about putting points into improved cleave with my build up there as well. It's a bit easier to control what it hits for multiple mobs and it goes from 50 damage to 110 bonus damage on the cleave with the new rework. But yeah, tactical mastery and anger management almost seem to be must haves for any warrior and I think part of my avoidance of them is my annoyance at that.

I hear you there. Every time I read people browbeating and insulting anyone who wants to try a non 31/20 build on the Blizzard forums, it makes me sick. I'm sickened by the powergamer mentality that rules there, as well as the fact that in terms of optimal PvP build, they're pretty much right.

Edit: I'm currently 11 arms, 29 prot, 11 fury. If I find myself not liking shield slam enough to justify losing piercing howl, I'll probably go back.

I'd get Iron Will over Last stand. Iron will would help your solo and group play, whereas last stand won't help when there's lots of healing available to you already. The last thing you want happening is getting stunned and the pve mobs ignoring you for being stunned. Much more useful than a bit of health, right?

Also, Piercing Howl is extremely useful in pvp and aoe environment. When things go wrong, you'll want aoe slow before everything gets pulled every which direction.

The shield bash/slam should be a lot more useful than you'd think. A lot of the caster classes PvE, and some melee classes pvp have armor buffs and sometimes other disgusting buffs. A warrior able to dispel them is extremely powerful.

Yep, that was my thinking on Iron Will as well. You stated it a bit better than I did.

Same with Piercing howl. I've survived without anger management (though I have loved it on test respecs) and it is that or howl since I am getting the new shield slam toy.

I was debating the usefulness of the 50% debuff chance on slam since I don't do a lot of outside reading about mobs and such until I've encountered them myself first (I still like the discovery factor). Good to know that it will be more fun than I thought it would. I already love the improved bash for 3 second silence.

You summed up some of my thoughts on the choices I made pretty well there, even if I didn't point it out in my other musings.

I'm debating what to do as well, and think that the new talent is definitely a better option than the previous option. It should create similar aggro, but instead of doing it by doing relatively insignificant damage, it will do it through a quite substantial amount of damage, which also makes the skill useful in PvP.

As I can't see myself living without piercing howl AND tactical mastery I'm planning on a similar build to what I had before with some talent swiching mostly in protection:

fury:
the boring 5 Cruelty / 5 Imp demo / 1 Piercing Howl

Arms:
5 parry / 4 tac. mastery

Prot:
5 shield spec / 5 toughness / 5 iron will
1 imp shield block / 3 or 5 defiance
2 imp shield bash / 1 concussion blow
3 or 5 1H spec
1 shield slam

I have skimped on some of the tanking talents (imp. taunt, last stand / imp. bloodrage) . I'm debating on the 1H spec or defiance as either making tanking slightly easier or adding a small amount of damage. I don't think either choice is particularly style-breaking.

For me the tac. mastery is pretty essential for PvP situations, being able to intercept or WW easily if I need to switch stances. The lack of anger management here is of lesser concern as you tend to stay in combat quite a bit when in battlegrounds.

I really like the new talent. It adds an instant attack that does signficant damage to the protection tree. This makes defensive stance signficantly more viable for PvP and solo... kind of like a mini-mortal strike. It reduces the damage defecit between the styles and makes it so that someone who takes protection isn't nearly as gimp in PvP as 1.5, allowing a more 'balanced' build for someone like me, who may do some instances in endgame and may do some PvP in endgame, whatever I feel like.

Yeah same on the feelings. With the build that was a tweak to my current build I was looking at. I'm currently 8 arms (3 tactical for just enough to hold all the rage of a charge), 31 prot, 11 fury. But Shield Discipline sucks, I use it every now and then but I was going to spec out of it. Then I saw free respec in 1.6 so I'm waiting. But yeah, if slam is not to my liking (it's been fun on test so far) I will probably spec to anger management and piercing howl and drop unbridled wrath and be like most of the other protection specs out there.

I did a rage spec on test with unbridled instead of improved Dem (so I had howl, and anger management) and I was a little rage machine in def stance with my one hander. The one rage from my 13% block chance the 1 rage every few seconds from anger management and the 1 rage from 40% chance with unbridled really started to add up. I saw a "you gain 1 rage" in the combat log a lot. I also did a non piercing spec with slam and only 4 points in unbridled. It was pretty much the same (32 vs 40% on unbridled) and I was shield slamming all the time.

Keep in mind as I posted in another thread slam is affected by def stance it suffers the 10% damage reduction penalty (so 405 to 495 damage on base attack now for rank 4). It seems to use your weapons crit percent for how it crits, just like bash. Armor on mobs reduce the damage (so sunder is still your friend here). It, like shield bash, doesn't care if you have a shield spike (which disappointed me). I don't think it was ever blocked, dodged, or parried in my tests, but I imagine it could be since shield bash can be. I always hate it when my shield bash is blocked.

One other thing to keep in mind for those with good tank gear setups... If the sum of your parry & dodge percentages is greater than 25%, using the shield block skill (or talent) actually overrides your chance to parry and dodge by the amount of overlap for the duration of the ability. That 80 blocked damage doesn't excite me quite as much when I realize that I'm losing a chance at 800 blocked damage (hypothetical #s). For that reason, I don't plan on even getting one point in the Imp. Shield Block talent (I'll still get the tier 1 talent for increased passive revenge triggers).

At the very least, I plan on using my free re-spec to get rid of improved revenge points and still pick up Concussion Blow without its pre-reqs.

Hmm, now you that you mention it I rarely use shield block anymore anyway. It used to be used to trigger a revenge and hope for improved revenge to go off (Gnolack's been protection his whole career) and that was quite nice in the lower instances when I wasn't playing with people who had tons of stun chances as well. But in these higher instance I just don't use it because with ~13% parry, dodge, and block, revenge is lit up all the time and I fire it off all the time anyway for the extra aggro. I actually use the crappy shield discipline more than shield block now. With shield slam I won't want to use rage on block either.

With this info I think my one point in that talent is gone and off to something else, maybe 2 in 1H spec or those 2 into shield wall or improved disarm (since disarm is about the only special you can do to some of the boss mobs so longer duration is good, that is much more damage removed from the fight as well as stopping MS from mobs than shield block could ever hope for as well).

For what it's worth, riposte (a rogue's version of disarm) is the key for Eth to be able to off-tank elite critters even in BRD at level 55. When evasion wears off, but I'm still needed to offtank, riposte (and stuns) for the win and it so helps me to not eat the healer's mana or have the healer focus solely on me. The best is when a mob looks at me just long enough for me to get a riposte in and then it goes back to the tank sans weapon. Being able to disarm and disarm for longer is a great tool.

I like your build ideas. That said, here's mine. It's a combination of what I find useful in my own experiences adn what this thread suggests as useful in endgame instances and raids:

Arms: 11 Points

5/5 Deflection
5/5 Tactical Mastery
1/1 Anger Management

Fury:

5/5 Cruelty
4/5 Unbridled Wrath

Protection
5/5 Shield Specialization
5/5 Toughness
5/5 Defiance
3/3 Imp. Revenge
2/2 Imp. Taunt
2/2 Imp. Shield Wall
2/2 Imp. Shield Bash
1/1 Concussive Blow
5/5 One Handed Mastery
1/1 Shield Slam

The Arms and Fury sections are fairly obvious - maximizing Rage. Tac Mastery, Anger Management, and Unbridled Wrath all help that. I chose AM over Piercing Howl, but that may change... or I might lose the top off Prot for the pair. It's all about the tradeoffs.

Protection... I have reasons for everything I took. Defiance and 1handed mastery should give me a huge overall boost in hate generation Dumping spare rage in Shield Slam should help with that, and that gives me a nice PvP skill. Imp. Taunt is all about when things go wrong, which happens. Conc Blow is my choice of Stun, and I also took Imp. Revenge because although it doesn work as well with rogues and diminishings Stuns and such, it's another stun and that's nice to have. I also reccommend checking out Imp. Shield Wall. As warriors, we all know how wonderful this skill is, and giving your healers another 5 seconds of 85% damage reduction never hurt anyone.

The only real points I debate, besides the big 'pick 2 of 3 rocking skills' debate, is the Imp. Revenge points. I'm considering swapping them to Imp. Disarm or Imp. Sunder Armor, the first of which would also have nice PvP utility and help a tiny bit against bosses, and the second of which would give me still more rage to work with.

Thoughts? I think a lot of the details in these builds is personal taste... and I'm curious to see what others think.

Alright so I get to respec tomorrow. I've changed my mind a bit from the original post. Keep in mind Gnolack will be protection spec even if you can tank better with a deep arms or deep fury build. Its what he is. I'm not doing a build with less than 25 points in protection, ever with him. So here is what I'm looking at now.

Protection
Shield Specialization - 5/5
Toughness - 5/5
Iron Will - 5/5
Defiance - 5/5
Improved Sunder Armor - 3/3
Improved Taunt - 2/2
Improved Shield Bash - 2/2
Concussion Blow Rank - 1/1
Improved Shield Wall - 2/2
Shield Slam - 1/1
Protection Total: 31

Fury
Cruelty - 5/5
Improved Demoralizing Shout - 5/5
Unbridled Wrath - 4/5
Piercing Howl - 1/1
Fury Total: 15

Arms
Deflection - 5/5
Arms Total: 5

Some thoughts on things. I prefer to 5 man, and I still have a lot of things that I need to 5 man and I would always rather 5 man a place than raid it even if we are after loot for someone.

So that is why Improved Taunt and Improved Sunder armor which are mainly "oh #$%&" moment talents are staying, 2 seconds or 3 fewer rage on your main lock down skill can be the difference between a dead priest or mage or a live one. Improved Shield block stays for it's high level of utility in 5 man situations as well.

One hand spec would actually be a bit more helpful for raids and such where you can tank without a shield at all for most everything and dual wield and such, but I dropped those.

I'm still not going with Last Stand and that is not an easy choice. Improved Bloodrage isn't that helpful and it becomes even less helpful the more people you have around. Last Stand has it's uses. I actually used it 4 times in Onyxia tonight and it kept me alive two of those times. The attempt where we had a lot of deaths in phase one I got thrown into the whelp room. I drank my heal pot, and hit shield wall. The 10 seconds of shield wall wasn't long enough for help to get to me, it took the help about 12 seconds. So I hit Last Stand and survived and was then one less corpse that needed to be rezzed. The whelps still would have been contained even if I didn't have it. There was another time where there was a whelp break out that I gathered with some dem shouts. The big lizard decided that would be a good time to hit me with a couple of fireballs, potion for the first and Last Stand after the 2nd, kept the whelps that were hitting me from killing me while help arrived and I was able to bandage out of it again it just saved a rezzer for having to try and bring me up. The other two times were in phase 2 to phase 3 transitions. Both of those times it didn't really do any good.

So, the verdict is still mixed. I'm willing to let it go so that I can have 15% chance to avoid stuns and charms which just annoy the hell out of me. Last Stand has no utility in loot raids. A 10 man Baron run has zero chance for Last Stand to be of any help. It has helped in some solo situations to give me a bit more time to run, it has helped in questing with a duo when we chain fight stuff for whatever reason and we need just a few more seconds for that heal to land. It has helped me prevent wipes in 5 man runs as well. It has also been utterly pointless since the heals were coming or me staying up for 5-15 more seconds was going to do anything anyway. It is another skill that seems to get less and less useful as the character gets older. It is less useful when you have highly skilled players with you. While I'm getting better I'm still mostly playing with Lurkers and CA and they have enough skill to cover for it. If I did more public raids I think it would be harder to let last stand go.

My build is actually using improved shield wall as my replacement for last stand. 6 more seconds of 75% damage reduction trumps a heal pot type ability.

I've decided Anger Management is out. I've never actually had it and been successful. While I would like to PvP more with Gnolack, I'm not willing to spend my time doing that right now. I know it's a very handy skill and I'm going to miss tactical mastery as well. So I'm getting unbridled wrath to help with rage generation (no one hand weapon spec either and that is a the protection tree rage generation helper). I'm doing 5 in improved dem shout because I do not want to see the whole "a more powerful effect is active" when I try to use it, I don't know if that is the case but it does scare me. I want more rage so I can do more shield slams. Since I'm not getting Anger Management I have to get piercing howl.

If unbridled wrath doesn't give me good rage returns I might put 3 points into improved cleave. I still cleave a fair bit, and 1 point into 1H weapon spec, or just all 4 points in 1H spec as 8% more damage could very well be as good as 32% chance to get one more rage in the long run.

Doing some DM West runs will probably do more for my rage generation (via a better one hander) than any talents could anyway.

Keep us up to date with how things pan out , I'm looking for a decent protection build and interested in how things go for your build . Cheers for the info so far .

I had to prove to myself that I would hold less aggro with a fury bulid (using some excel calculations) before I could settle on sticking with Protection.

My current spec has been very successful for me (ignore the gear, just my fire res kit in progress). I'm frequently the designated offtank/2nd tank for Basin raids on Tich and I feel very confident in 5-man situations. The last thing that I encountered that I haven't figured out yet is the Shaman quest event in Scholo (the one that requires a full clear of Rattlegore's room) - holding aggro on 9 elites without room to kite for fear of aggroing more was not fun. Wipe free 5-man strat (both sides), check. The rest of Scholo, check. The ogre head event in LBRS and surviving that stupid warlord's command boss that hits like a truck... check. DM West prince fight without losing aggro for more than half a second - check (only on my most recent attempt).

So... anyway, if I don't like my respec I will have no hesitation in going back to an 11/29/11.

That said, my new plan is:
15 arms:
2 Imp H. Strike (a staple rage dump w/o a timer and good aggro). Choosing this over unbridled wrath because I'm toying around with the "HS for burst damage" concept.
5 Deflection.
Anger Management (the rage generation of 3-4 unbridled wrath for only 1 talent point).
2 Imp. Overpower (I am on a PvP server, make alliance rogues earn their kills).

31 Prot:
5 Shield Spec. - for passive overpower triggering. Around 20% chance to block when using barrier shield with +2% block enchant. That's 1 free rage on 1/5 incoming physical attacks. One more piece of Might Set and the mitigation won't be half bad in some fights.
5 Toughness - There is no diminishing returns on armor in terms of increasing survivability (it's linear), approaching 8k in melee tank gear with this.
5 Iron Will - 15% less chance to lose aggro in some of the game's trickiest 5-man fights. Annoy stunlock rogues in PvP too.
5 Defiance - I'm a big believer in this talent. Yes, skills generate the most hate, but base damage aggro sets the baseline and is often the first line of defense when specials' cooldowns aren't up.
2 Imp. Shield Wall - I like to blow shield wall right at the start of a hard fight to get a big lead over heal aggro. The talent gives me some extra lead time - a luxury choice.
2 Imp. Shield Bash - I've been dying to pop this out on an unsuspecting caster in PvP but never had the room for it. Thank god for imp. revenge no longer being a pre-req.
Concussion Blow - my favorite way to "hold" an add in a 5-man. Lets me get back to our main target and allows CC on the target afterwards at the CC class' leisure.
5 1H Mastery - Rage->Skills->Aggro. This talent takes care of the rage component nicely. Nice synergy with defiance.
1 Shield Slam - take the new puppy out for a test drive.

5 Fury:
Cruelty. I don't think I could ever make a build without it. See 1H mastery comments for PvE justificaiton. Pretty essential for PvP where I really only expect to win many one on one encounters if I can get a lucky crit streak.

One of the best uses of a macro I have seen came from Charsi of IA. Whenever Charsi activates Last Stand, there is a chat comment in all caps and astericks in order to draw attention of the healers that Last Stand was activated. Hopefully, the healer knows what Last Stand is about and does something before the timer runs out.

Four more points -- the agony!

Fafner went Protection in hope of being invited to a few more parties. (This a week and a half after she finally fleshed out her previous build of Furry/Arms.) After the patch removed all her talents she did a Scarlet run and had some difficulty. We wiped on the second pull. Eventually we finished.

Last night she was invited to UBRS. I am a firm believer that one should never assign all one's talent points while in an instance, so she has four left. Here is her current build so far:


Arms:

Deflection 5
Tactical Mastery 5
Anger Management 1


Protection:

Anticipation 5
Shield Specialization 5
Toughness 5
Iron Will 5
Defiance 2
Improved Shield Bash 2
Concussion Blow 1 (She always wanted to be a paladin.)
One-Handed Weapon Specialization 5
Shield Slam 1


Fury:

Cruelty 5



The choices for the last four points include:

Improved Demoralizing Shout
Improved Shield Wall
Improved Sunder Armor
more Defiance
Improved Charge (yes, really)


What should she do? Keep in mind that she spends most of her time solo and that she still needs a mount. Rage usage reduction skills like Improved Sunder Armor might be OK solo, but do not seem important in instance groups. When she dies solo it is usually with zero rage. When she dies in instances it is typically with full rage. On the other hand Sunder Armor is her staple skill.

More Defiance could be useful in instances for all the reasons noted, particularly when the paladin keeps Blessing of Salvation on you like last night in UBRS. (Maybe it's a gnome thing?)

Soloing, Defiance is less useful.

She misses Improved Charge from her former build. She may not want to give it up.

Improved Demoralizing Shout would be nice too. Gnollguy said "Dem Shout breaks sleep..." I'm not sure if what was meant was "sleep" or "sheep" but last night Fafner walked up to a sheep and demoralized it without problem. That or there was a lot of lag. And no, the sheep was not in Elwynn Forest. I don't know of any player spell that sleeps anymore, at least that people use in instance groups. I need to test this a bit further, but it would be terrible if Demoralizing Shout could not be spammed in instances.

Thoughts or ideas welcome. I would love to read what other folks have done.

I meant sleep. It is the ony CC that Demshout breaks. Otherwise it a good ides to dem shout and piercing howl around sheeped and shackled targets because it give you hate on those mobs without breaking the CC. If I charge, thunderclap, dem shout and piercing howl, it is extremely rare that an early CC break goes anywhere but me. Even without the clap and the initial pull hate (a sheep pull) a dem shout and a piercing howl (or 2 dem shouts) will usually have an early break running to me. It usually won't run to me if the healer had to heal the CC'er though, in that case it will usually run to the priest. If I take a lot of healing the early break may go for the the priest as well. Linked CC things will still sometimes go to the CC as well. But usually I can keep the sheep breaks running to me if they pop early. It also means that if someone pops with a swing the thing will usually go for me as well.

But a druids sleep is broken by a dem shout.

My poor druid is only six. Is this hibernate? I looked it up. She does not know about such things. Only works on beasts and dragonkin. Learn something every day.

It's me again with the 3rd build since 1.6 (I spent 5 gold for this one). Again, Gnolack will never have a build that is less than 26 points in protection just because. This is probably a fairly common build because well I've gone to the "Dark Side" and gotten Anger Management. This means I no longer have piercing howl and the jury is still out on that. But personally I don't think I used the skill enough or as effectively as I could, I think I won't miss it as much as I should really.

So I ended up here:

Arms: (11)
* Deflection - 5 / 5
* Tactical Mastery - 5 / 5
* Anger Management - 1 / 1

Fury: (5)
* Cruelty - 5 / 5

Protection: (31)
* Shield Specialization - 5 / 5
* Toughness - 5 / 5
* Defiance - 5 / 5
* Improved Sunder Armor - 3 / 3
* Improved Taunt - 2 / 2
* Improved Shield Wall - 2 / 2
* Improved Shield Bash - 2 / 2
* Concussion Blow - 1 / 1
* One-Handed Weapon Specialization - 5 / 5
* Shield Slam - 1 / 1

And that left me with 4 points. So I looked at things.

Protection: There are 7 talents there I could put points in.
* Last Stand: I'd already decided against this as you can see in my 2 previous posts. This is a skill that becomes less and less useful the more people you get around you. I did wish I had it once or twice in 5 man on LBRS, but neither of those times would have saved a wipe. One would have saved me a repair bill and the other would have meant that we killed all the adds and had one personal alive (I still would have died) instead of having one mob left and all of us dead. It still would have been a total wipe as we had no rezzer so it was a run back situation anyway.
* Improved Bloodrage: I'm not getting this if I'm not getting last stand. It once again is a skill that is more valuable the less people you have with you. Taranna is a better farmer than Gnolack and I can get Thorium without needed to chain fight (which is where improved bloodrage shines more) and that is the only think I would farm that she can't.
* Anticipation: My +def gear with the execption of one two pieces of equipment (one of which I usually don't even carry) has more +stam than any of my other gear. I can get to 420 defense with gear right now and I have no +def gloves and really bad +def bracers (so I usually only get to 414 def since I don't wear the bracers). I can still get upgrades on the cloak and shield spots pretty easily as well. Since 390 def was enough to never get a crit hit on me in LBRS I don't think I need the minor flexibility in equipment that +8 more def (only 4 points left for the build) would get me.
* Improved Shield Block: I have over 25% combined chance to dodge or parry even in my combat gear. I have over 12% block in any of my gear. I never use shield block now. Improving it will actually cause me to take more damage most of the time if I use the skill as I will block an additional attack and hence take damage as opposed to avoiding that damage completely.
* Improved Revenge: Chance to stun on a revenge. I revenge all the time. This sounds good. Nope I would rather not. It will help when I solo. In a group it will make the mob stun immune and if I need to land a conc blow on it I won't be able to. Heck mobs become stun immune before I can conc blow them now with all the rogues and mages and shadow spec priests, and hunters getting stuns on it. I would rather have 5 seconds of conc blow when I want it than 3 seconds of this and 2.5 seconds of conc blow. Great skill if you, for whatever reason, grow up protection spec (and a theme char is the only good reason I can see for that) but a potential hinderance higer up.
* Improved Disarm: I like this skill. This one has some nice uses to help mitigate damage, stops mobs that can use heroic strike from hitting you. 3 seconds more helps with that. I thought about going here, but I didn't.
* Iron Will: I had this maxed in the old build. It helped a few times but it's not reliable. It's like paladin damage. Great when you get it but there is a lot of time you want it and don't get it. I moved 5 points out of it and put them in 1H weapon spec for more consistent rage/hate generation. 1H weapon spec also helps make up for my subpar 1 hander. It's not a bad skill now that it works, but I just didn't think that points were worth it at my level of gear and the stuff I am doing with the character.

The arms tree offered 6 skills I could put points into:
* Improved Rend/Deep Wounds: These go together since I would only get Improved Rend for the one point I could sink into Deep wounds since I don't rend all that much. A 20% chance to get a weak bleed just didn't seem that helpful. It wouldn't hurt anything but eh. I still see these 2 skills just as a means to get impale anyway.
* Improved Thunder Clap: 17 rage vs 20 rage for thunder clap. I use thunder clap when I can. It's an OK attention getter for 4 mobs. The damage mitigation of slower attacks is nice, but dropping the cost by 3 rage, especially now that I have 5 points in tactical mastery and the passive rage generation of anger management didn't seem that helpful.
* Improved Heroic Strike: I have shield slam. This talent like improved Sunder Armor is only really good if you are going to be using Heroic Strike a lot. I have shield slam. I will still use Heroric strike at times (mainly when I can't wait for more rage). But shield slam is just a better damage to rage skill.
* Improved Charge: 6 more rage on a charge. I like that. I thought a lot about it. I have my tactical mastery now. If I charge and miss I will still be able to thunder clap before I change stances. I like the charge pull in many locations. If you don't need a rogue to apply CC there are lots of benefits to charging the mobs, clapping then having sheep or sleep CC applied. You can still move the mobs back to a safer area after this as well. It also helps if someone else is pulling and you want to intercept the mob before it gets to the party. I didn't take it, but I still might respec again and get it. It's only 2 points so I would still have 2 points to go somewhere else.
* Improved Overpower: Very nice skill. Again heavy debate. However while I stance switch a lot when I have tactical mastery I'm not usually quick enough to use this while tanking in def stance and for some odd reason things don't dodge me that much to light this button up. I went out and beat on scarlets and bloodsails and others and really didn't see much chance to use it. I don't PvP with this guy yet either so that nice use isn't there. I still might get it in the future though.

Fury had 4 choices for me to put the 4 points I had.
* Booming Voice: Duration increase on Battle Shout is nice, but since I don't have improved battle shout if I'm around another warrior who does I can't battle shout anyway. Longer Dem shout would be helpful in a few places, but generally no good since dem shout get's semi spammed for extra aggro. Larger AoE? I would like that in some places, but I've gotten adds with dem shout with it's current radius. Being more careful with it isn't something I want to have to do.
* Unbridled Wrath: I had 4 points in the before to see if it would "make up" for no 1H spec and no anger management. It was alright at a 4 point level. It with with AM and a faster 1 hander than I have would have really helped make me a little rage machine as this really did give me about 1 rage every 5 seconds or so (and more than that dual wielding). However while my old build did cause me some issues with rage generation there were times when I had more than I needed. AM and 1H spec mean that I shouldn't have any of the old build rage issues and while more slams is good I don't really need them.
* Improved Dem Shout: 4 points is 44.8 more reduction in attack power. I don't think there is any hidden aggro bonus to this either. So what does that do? It's a few DPS from a single mob. That doesn't really help me that much with my high damage mitigation. It does help the mages, locks and healers during AoE. Since the mage will have aggro on lots of mobs it can add up. Let's say just 5 mobs with 2.5 attack speed. Lets say just 2 DPS, or 5 damage less per hit. If each mob gets 4 hits in before they die you saved 100 damage. I actually think that 44.8 attack power is more than 2 DPS on most mobs as well. My main uses of piercing howl was to slow the mobs on the way into an AoE blast. It was also used to help with runner control and for a little more AoE threat but dem shout does better for that.

So the points went into improved Dem Shout. The biggest reason was the You can't kill me or my friends you bastard! attitude of the character. More ways to mitigate damage rapidly won out. That doesn't mean the points will stay. I've already been pulled away from the basic theme some I don't know how much longer I can hold out against more optimal tanking.

I have been exceedingly happy with my 15 arms, 31 prot, 5 fury build (first live 1.6 respec).

Encountered the same 4 "up in the air" points quandary. I went with 2 improved overpower (I'm on a PvP server and doing a lot of Alterac Valley for the Unstoppable Force - critting Rogues and other Warriors frequenly is very fun). The other two I put on improved Heroic Strike, because once I have 5 sunders up, and shield slam is on cooldown, that's my most frequently used skill. Similar logic to putting points in imp. sunder armor.

Details & gear (most melee tanking gear in bags) can be seen on my allakhazam profile.

Somewhat of a tangent, but how often is AV up for you guys?

On Tichondrius there is almost always at least one up. Peak hours 2-3, super peak hours I've seen 4 up at once. Strange how a lot of people want to PvP on a PvP server...

Sometimes they start with 40 alliance and 20 horde though, that's not too fun.